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Enhancing energy efficiency in a data-intensive IT world

As we push for smart nations, are modern energy sources
able to keep powering current data centers?

Innovation in clean energy and automation will enable data
centers to continue running with efficiency and performance.
There are companies who have demonstrated that this is possible.
For instance, web giants such as Facebook, Baidu, and Google have
paved the way in this regard through power purchase agreements of
solar and wind energy.

Together with innovative, connected technologies around IT,
power, and cooling infrastructure, we believe energy can be used
in an efficient and sustainable way. While currently these
practices are being implemented with large scale data centers,
they will eventually be adopted by smaller enterprise centers.
We see the adoption of renewable energy and innovative
technologies as key to further improve the energy
landscape.

Are we developing alternative energy or modern energy
generation solutions quickly enough to keep pace with demand? As
we drive demand up, can we keep on producing enough energy to
meet the demand?

There are opportunities to generate more energy to meet
increasing demands through large deployments of solar and
wind farms throughout the world, as well as bringing on new power
plants. However, it is not just about creating more energy
sources, it is about managing the demand side of the equation as
well. In the United States, there are incentive programs that
encourage data centers to use their battery energy storage as a
means of curtailment.

In the future, we will need more storage capacity to meet the
growing demand for energy, but there are opposing forces to the
creation of this additional capacity. On the one hand, the demand
for data is continuously increasing, and on the other hand, there
is a new generation of IT solutions that optimise our energy
efficiencies, allowing us to maximise our output for every watt.

We are seeing this increasing demand in power and cooling
architectures as well. For example, there are chillers today that
can drastically increase economiser hours by supplying 20 Celsius
of chilled water. Older chillers would not be able to operate at
such a temperature.

What about cooling? Are we addressing it correctly in
Singapore? Are the BCA standards enough to meet green or
efficient energy standards? Can Singapore truly push itself to
the forefront of being a data center hub?

Although Singapore has a challenging climate due to strong sun
exposure and humidity, there are energy efficient solutions that
can increase cooling efficiencies while maintaining environmental
sustainability. For example, chillers can be used to increase
economiser hours. Indirect air economizers, if water is
available, can also be used for evaporative cooling. Admittedly
water usage is becoming a bigger issue. Another solution that may
hold promise is immersion liquid cooling, which could achieve
100% free-cooling even in Singapore’s tropical climate.

Is PUE still relevant as a measurement of
data center efficiency? Are there other things we should be
looking out for? What should we be aiming to achieve in
Singapore?

Yes, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) remains a key metric, but
Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) is as important. In the early
days, there was a task force trying to come with metrics for IT
work produced – per Watt of power consumed including kilobyte of
stores/watt, number of web pages served/watt. This was the best
measure of efficiency because it forced the IT department to be
more efficient. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to
standardise metrics around this idea. For instance, eBay has
implemented this on their own by developing a dashboard of
metrics that works for their organisation.

Another crucial aspect is achieving carbon reduction goals.
Countries around the world, including Singapore, have taken steps
to reduce greenhouse gases in line with the Paris Agreement to
lower their carbon footprint. We are at the forefront of
sustainability at Schneider Electric and our solutions, such as
air economisers and chillers, enable data centers to meet these
goals.

Over the past few years, as the Cloud took hold and
shape, was there a drop in data center demand/capacity?
Can't we simply fill up the space as demand
increases?

I think you’re referring to the dot-com crash in 2000. If so,
this was a time of great expansion, where many colocation data
centers were empty and later acquired for pennies on the dollar.
But all of that slack has been taken up over the last decade. We
are seeing the growth again and this time the colocations are
being filled.

As we roll out IoT and digital transformation,
are data centers able to meet network and traffic
demands? Are current DCIM solutions adequate?

I posed this question to a Gartner research analyst a few years
back and he had no doubt that there is enough bandwidth
available. As the data demand increases, they just lay more
fiber. To manage the growth of data centers at the current pace
requires a cloud-based DCIM. At Schneider Electric, we have
EcoStruxure™ IT – a cloud enabled DCIM software that can monitor
data centers and IT locations.

The appeal of a cloud based DCIM is tied to a central tenet of
best practices for data center operations – monitoring. Without
monitoring, there are no benchmarks for improvement and therefore
no possibility of optimising data center capacity and resources.
The adoption of cloud-based DCIM allows companies to leverage the
low costs and benefit from the data driven approach.

How much legacy infrastructure is still in
data centers in the region? Are they going to be able to
modernise fast enough?

It is key for companies to modernise legacy infrastructure to
support the latest IT hardware and increasing bandwidth
requirements. Singapore, where data center capacity is one
of the highest in the region at 370 megawatts, is the most robust
Asian market in terms of business operations, based on a study by
Cushman and Wakefield.

With the growing amount of data being generated and a shift
towards outsourced data centers, companies with legacy
infrastructure in their own data rooms are able to catch up and
consider alternative options, as well as redevelop their data
centers to maximise capabilities.

What are enterprises still overlooking or neglecting in
data centers?

One thing I often notice are data centers that are designed to a
specific rack density (i.e. 7kW/rack) but deployed at an average
below that. Deploying a lower average rack density results in
stranding power and cooling capacity. While it is possible to
design for the capability of 7kW/rack, businesses should build a
larger floor space to accommodate more racks in case the average
falls below 7kW. Another way is to strand concrete which is a lot
cheaper than power and cooling equipment.